Page 7 of Charming the Cowboy
Her eyes had always been round and a bit too intense. Like she could see things inside of him that he couldn’t even see. And she hadn’t changed, all through their growing up. All the way to now.
What had changed was the shape of his fascination with her. It had been an intangible, unknowable thing through their growing-up years. A kind of protectiveness.
He could remember her going to her first dance at school, and he’d been worried about her date getting handsy with her. She’d been…like another younger sister, in many ways. He’d wanted to keep her safe. He’d wanted to see her happy.
He wanted to be the one to make her smile, but he wasn’t good at that. Because he was serious and she was sunny, andeven though he had trouble shining any back on her, he’d taken a lot of joy in that sunshine glowing over him the past few years.
Now though…
His fascination with her wasn’t quite so wholesome.
He wanted her. Badly. In a way that wasn’t brotherly, protective, or even about her happiness.
His refusal to act on it, though, was about those things.
Because his attraction to her wasn’t only about her beauty. She was compelling in a way no other woman ever had been to him. She was intense, and odd, and interesting. Not compliments, traditionally, maybe, but they were things that interested him.
But Cooper knew better than to ever act on the tooth-aching need that he felt for his best friend’s little sister.
First of all, because Marcus had warned him away years ago – something about a curse, and the total vulnerability of his sister because of that family curse.
Which Cooper didn’t believe at all. He could believe that Eliana was maybe more fragile because she’d lost her dad. Because she’d had a parade of shitty stepdads and, as far as he could see, a loving but chaotic upbringing.
Curses, though, he didn’t believe in.
Marcus didn’t have a wife because he was a cad. Eliana didn’t have relationships because… well, he didn’t know why.
She was an incandescent person. He might not believe in any of the hocus pocus stuff, but she did, and it was oddly charming in its way. He was always amazed she didn’t have men following after her in a pack.
He knew whyhestayed away. Partly because of Marcus. Because he was the best friend Cooper had ever had. And partly because Cooper also knew that for her sake, he couldn’t ever go there if he couldn’t promise something real. He couldn’t. His whole life was shaped around a violent, sudden loss, and therewas just no getting around that for him. He couldn’t fathom having a wife, children, and that meant any of his relationships were destined to be…
Physical.
She was too special for just physical.
She was so…effective. A weird word, but it suited her. When she set her mind to something, it seemed to happen.
And if you were to ask her about it, she would probably say that it had to do with herdeep knowing.
Meet me at lunch to discuss?
Sure.
There was no reason not to meet her at lunch. He had chores to get done, but was usually through with the cattle by midday, at which point he turned his focus to brewing. At this point, he had a pretty comprehensive thing going. But he was still perfecting the product and getting it all off the ground. He had two absolutely perfect brews. He could replicate them, and he had all the licensing he needed to be able to do them at his facility, now he needed permission to sell it. The idea of setting up some kind of café on the ranch had been his dad’s. He’d dreamed of a brewery. Of being able to not be quite so dependent on the ranching side of things. Because it was fickle. Because it was difficult. Fundamentally, he’d dreamed of a life that wasn’t quite so hard for his kids.
It seemed like such a terrible thing that he died doing something that he hadn’t loved all the way to his bones. Not that he didn’t love the ranch and the land, but what if things had been different? What if he had been able to get the brewery up and running. What if he had been able to shift the business structure of the ranch.
Well, maybe he would still be here. Maybe his tractor wouldn’t have turned over on him.
Either way, they all felt bound to see their dad’s dream become a reality.
Cooper was more involved in the actual brewing process; his younger sister, Lindsay, was all about figuring out the marketing, and his older brother, Hank, was dedicated to the oversight of everything. Keeping it all running.
Their mom was just glad they were all close to home, and that was when she wasn’t wringing her hands about being a burden. Or about them feeling like they had to carry on their dad’s legacy.
She always told them that they could go do whatever they wanted, be whatever they wanted, but Cooper knew the truth. It had all been set in stone the day his dad had died.
Cooper had only been eight. Hank had been eleven. And poor Lindsay had been in diapers. She didn’t even remember their dad.
